Bomba, there is always someone at work, and neary by street children play in the dust between the missing paving stones.

A workman walks past bails of fabric on a hand-cart in his ubiquitous Ghandi style garb and Nehru cap.

The single best thirst quencher is Cane Juice, there are literally thousands of stalls all over the metropolis selling Cane Juice which is prepared and crushed and mixed with lime or mint and sold for 10rs a glass. Its a sweet, cool light-green drink with a hint of cinnamon and a frothy head.

A flour Mill in Fort, Bombay India. Someones respected father represented ont he wall, and the eye-of-shiva marked on the portrait gives the scene an uncanny and humorous appeal. It reminds me of Carlos the Jackal.

Bombay! The old part of the city, at its southern tip is an area called Fort, this is a mix of british and dutch colonial achitecture, as it was a dutch trading port before the British arrived.Parts of the city are wide tree-lined streets with beautiful Indian buildings, others wonderful British buildings which are still used today for state buildings and civil activities like the India Post building and CST which was formerly known as Victoria station, that building is a vast cavernous hulk with flying buttresses and warren-like interior housing hundreds of offices.In between the cracks lie the back-streets which are mind-blowing networks in impossibly small areas that accommodate millions of working indians who eek out their existences in stunning displays of resilience.

Bombay! These are typical workers on their way to or from work, their style is accommodating to extreme temperatures of 50+ centigrade, the garments are cheap but well tailored white cotton in the style of Jawahlal Nehru who was the first prime minister of India, a solid intelligent man who founded many of the principles of what are now considered the pillars of Indian modernity.

The slums of Mumbai, a truly heart warming experience which in many ways reminds me of the way life used to be when I was a child growing up in Ireland. Its an amazing experience to see how these people live, where everything is recycled, water is abundant and used for everything, children play, are happy, adults come and go out of the city to work and some work in the slums, but everyone is truly happy. There are no traffic jams, there is no ill-will, and there is mutually expressed respect amongst all.

Amol, from Video Volunteers and India Unheard, shows us around the slums where he lives. Its an amazing experience to see how these people live, where everything is recycled, water is abundant and used for everything, children play, are happy, adults come and go out of the city to work and some work in the slums, but everyone is truly happy. There are no traffic jams, there is no ill-will, and there is mutually expressed respect amongst all.

Bombay, aka Mumbai, its so hot, that there are no door on the trains, people hang out and off the trains as they bolt around the local intercity area. Rarely do accidents happen.

The monsoon is late and everything is dry, hard and thirsty. The locals are preparing hard for the oncoming torrential onslaught which is to last about twelve weeks.

We came to get our milk back please, monsoon is late and the kids are getting hungry.

I think that India brings one closer to ones priorities, because ones priorities become prioritized.
You simply must achieve the things you need to achieve in order to actually survive.
In the west we put off so much of our priorities because we actually set up the system of our existence to facilitate that.
Paul Thereux said somewhere that convenience is the enemy of something that I can’t remember now. If he didn’t say that then I did.

I am in room Nothing. Im going to call it Seven. Its the joker in the pack of rooms Ive stayed in, in India so far. Bhopal, Goa, Kumbh, Varanasi, Pushkar, Bhopal, Goa. Seven Rooms, three of them were number 7, the rest didnt have any numbers, like this one, my brightly Orange Hindu bedroom #7.

Every room, starrts out as a functional respite from the rigours of travel, traversing ground over time to exist in another space for an alloted time. Every room, after a while becomes stagnant, and somewhat intolerable, a reminder of impersonal functionality it serves, imposing cost, and inevitable build up to departure to the next place. The space becomes familiar and a nest as best possible within the constraints. The room exists for a period and it is your prerogative to either ignore it and spend as much time out of it as possible, or to concede to it. There is no way of personalizing the space, as the knowledge exists that you will be leaving that room in a foreseeable period, and with that it becomes a crater for the veritable bag explosion when you are finally done with negotiations and finances. Just as quickly it becomes the events of the period which in some case are best left in the room when the door is closed and the bill is paid.

Its impossible to be tidy, your bag is designed to take as much as you brought and its designed to take that load utilizing every possible area of volume the space will take. So the contents spring out and are organized into whats needed, what is to be washed and what isn’t needed, which means piles.

If theres a desk it becomes my office, cables wires chargers batteries keys tools trinkets and gadgets adorn the surface. The equipment stays in the case because its safe from humidity, dust, heat and insects.

The bed becomes the other desk, designed perfectly to house everything at arms reach when you are laying under the 720rpm ceiling fan buffeting you with slightly cooler air, too drenched in your own sweat to contemplate anything other then momentary thoughts and vignettes of the days events before drifting in and out of sleep for the next five hours while fighting with mosquitos.

This is what I wrote the other night. (more then a month ago)
Theres a baby downstairs that cries, it roars crying like Al Pacino did in The Godfather, one of the most piercing and humiliating scenes I have ever seen in my life. When I hear that baby crying I can hear the sounds of an adult, crisply and clearly. It is an unhappy child. I hear that little thing open up like an orchestra and unleash a cry of disbelief and complete inability to contemplate the word Help.
The disconnect between mother and child, is subconscious; intrinsically, the mother loves the child naturally like any other mother would. However, somewhere buried deep within the realm of subconsciousness, lies an impasse. The predicament affords no luxuries to the owner. The disconnect, is an involuntary space between that, which makes a woman perform as a mother (and therefor the ability to recognize the babies directives), and the conscious mind. This impasse, is an irritant in the junction of thought streaming, which is where the mind breaks down the components of thought, and separates them into recognizable, and characterizable streams, relating to categories of psychological contemplation. This is how we produce thoughts also, where certain streams bind together to create an opinion or conviction. The amount of any particular stream dictates the direction, form and benevolence of the thought and ultimately influences any subsequent actions.

These streams are influenced by both internal pre-recognized experiences, which in of them selves are a packaged containers of streams varying in intensity depending on the circumstance, and new previously unreconciled ingredients which come together to generate convictions which are usually based on pre-established stream containers additional cumulative values.